Lifeline/Low-Income Consumers

A new proposal spearheaded by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai aims to eliminate the ability of certain carriers to provide Lifeline services, disproportionately affecting rural areas. Kansas would be hit hard by the harsh new Lifeline rules. It is estimated that about 70 percent of the state’s 45,131 Lifeline households would lose service, including veterans and seniors.

I want to give your readers an update on the latest move by AT&T to push people off the traditional home phone service they have relied upon for decades. This past Sept, we began to field calls from worried landline customers, including seniors on fixed incomes, who were among an estimated 5,300 customers to receive a letter from AT&T with the blunt headline: “Your Lifeline discount ends November 20, 2018.” The letter referred to the federal Lifeline program, which offers a monthly credit of up to $11.75 for qualifying low-income customers.

This study draws on participant observation and interviews with low-income adults in Chicago to show how the poor stay connected to phone service and mobile Internet through the possession of multiple phones, including those subsidized by government aid. The “accumulation” of phones by individuals is widely observed, though underexplored in scholarship. Popular media coverage in the US frames the possession of multiple phones by people in poverty as criminal or excessive.

For Americans who can afford reliable phone service, help surviving a natural disaster is just a phone call away. Individuals in the path of a storm can dial 2-1-1 to get answers to non-emergency questions such as the location of shelters and evacuation areas. After the storm has passed, 2-1-1 provides access to disaster resources including food and housing assistance, crisis counseling, and health and human services.

More than 1 million veterans rely on the Lifeline program connecting low-income households to essential services like health care, job opportunities and public safety. Unfortunately, proposed changes from the Federal Communications Commission threaten to undermine this vital program and hurt those who depend on it most. About 40 million people are eligible for Lifeline and roughly 10 million of those have enrolled. Of the enrollees, around 1.3 million (or more than 10 percent) are veterans or disabled veterans living near or below the poverty line.

There's no better time for state and local governments to get serious about developing proactive approaches to keeping residents connected in the days, months and years following a natural disaster. Among the programs that should be advertised to disaster survivors is the federal Lifeline program, which provides a subsidy that covers all or a portion of the cost of wireless voice and internet services for low-income consumers who qualify.

Over the past several years the Federal Communications Commission has brought sweeping changes to Lifeline, the telecommunications aid program for low-income households. These changes are designed to shift the program’s focus from telephone service to broadband service. Though few would question the need to narrow the digital divide, many (including me) have criticized the way the commission has chosen to do so.

The support structures that assist low-income families cannot work unless those in need have functional means of communication. Doctors monitoring children with fragile health, employers who can offer an extra shift to a struggling worker, nutrition support programs like SNAP which must confirm income eligibility — all these must be able to communicate with a low-income person, often within limited timeframes. Our collective and individual economic well-being is dependent on communications tools.

In an era that’s buzzing with talk of autonomous vehicles and virtual wallets, mere access to broadband internet remains out of reach for many. And while Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai frequently reminds the public that his top priority is closing the digital divide, his actions have made it harder, again and again, for Americans to get internet access. He has been leading the charge to gut Lifeline, the federal program that subsidizes phone and broadband connections for low-income people in the United States.